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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281183">A Tough Act to Follow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/pseuds/xslytherclawx'>xslytherclawx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red White &amp; Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Meetings, Gen, Political Campaigns, Pre-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:48:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/pseuds/xslytherclawx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people don't want to spend their summer after high school following the Democratic primary campaign trail.</p><p>Nora Holleran is not most people.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>June Claremont-Diaz &amp; Nora Holleran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>All Your Faves Are Jewish, Yuletide 2020, xslytherclawx's jewish fic, xslytherclawx’s events collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Tough Act to Follow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallooh/gifts">kallooh</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Yuletide, kallooh! I hope you enjoy this!<br/>I always wondered how June and Nora (and Alex and Nora) met - when exactly it was. </p><p>Thanks again to Mousek for beta reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Grandchildren are not usually on the campaign trail.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Much less this early on in the primaries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Nora, not quite eighteen, is nothing if not brilliant. She’s smarter than pretty much all of her grandfather’s campaign staff – but, really that says more about her than it does about them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s run the numbers and she doesn’t, strictly speaking, love her grandfather’s chances of winning this primary, much less the general. It’s always harder for the party in power to win a general after eight years in the White House. Much less when the president they’re all striving to follow is Barack Obama. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime politician. Everyone with sense knows that; Nora rarely needs to point it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loves her grandfather, but Obama is a tough act to follow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She runs through the stats before the first debate, which is when June Claremont-Diaz introduces herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora knows June.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, she knows who June is. And her brother, Alex. And their father, Oscar. And, most importantly, their mother, Ellen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hasn’t actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>met</span>
  </em>
  <span> any of them before now, except Ellen once when she was fourteen, and even that was just kind of in passing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Polling this early is a delicate, buggy thing, and Nora knows better than to rely on it. But, well, she thinks Ellen Claremont has a damn good chance of winning this thing. Or, at the very least, she’ll hang on for a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora has looked into every candidate, and there’s a few ways it could go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s still early.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to make any calls just yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when she looks at June, she’s not really thinking about the fact that she might, in fact, be speaking to the future First Daughter of the United States.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>June Claremont-Diaz is pretty. Like, really pretty. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like, Nora has to do a double-take.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For Nora, being bi has always just kinda been a thing. She didn’t always know, and it wasn’t like the first time she touched a boob any internalized homophobia just vanished. But she didn’t have a difficult time figuring it out, and she never had that dramatic struggle that movies and tv shows show.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora knows data. She knows that a lot of bi people have that struggle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s just not one of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she also knows that’s not really, like, uncommon, either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she’s not going to make things weird.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiles and nods and introduces herself, and shakes June’s hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows all about June – she knows all about all of the other candidates’ families. She’s nineteen, studying journalism at UT Austin, and she’s well on her way to becoming a style icon. If Ellen Claremont wins – or becomes VP (the odds are a little better on that; the country is still staggeringly misogynistic, for all the positive change Nora’s even been alive to see. Though, again, it’s still too early to really tell) – June will become a household name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora doesn’t really care about fashion, but she figures any kid of two senators, let alone one who studies journalism, has to have something in common with her that they can talk about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your mom is polling really well,” she says, which probably isn’t what June expects her to say. “She’s currently outperforming any female Democratic candidate in history.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>June nods like she knows this – and she probably does. Nora isn’t sure how involved June is with her mother’s campaign, but she has to pay </span>
  <em>
    <span>some</span>
  </em>
  <span> attention to the numbers, right? “The trick’s gonna be getting Texas in the general.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She says it with such confidence that her mother will win the primary. Suspicions aside, Nora simply can’t be that confident at this point which candidate will win the primary. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora shrugs. “Nine presidents have won the general despite losing their home state. It’s possible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>June doesn’t react like Nora expects; most people are surprised at the breadth of Nora’s knowledge, and ask her how she can possibly know that without googling it. June takes it in stride. “Yeah, but one of ‘em was W.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The implication that that election was not, in fact, an actual victory is one that Nora agrees with. “Okay, so eight. And one of them was Lincoln.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your grandfather ran back in ‘08, right? In the primaries, I mean,” June asks, though Nora’s sure she already knows the answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora nods. “I wasn’t allowed to be on the trail then, though.” She was barely eleven when her grandfather dropped out of that race. She was still in elementary school. Her parents – and grandparents, too – had their reservations about allowing her on the trail now, but she was done high school. She was almost an adult, and her parents treated her as such.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Besides, being this close to the action was an experience she wouldn’t get anywhere else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like him a lot. Senator Holleran,” she adds, like it wasn’t clear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like your mom a lot,” Nora says. She lists a few accomplishments that Senator Claremont has under her belt that are impressive for anyone – not just someone as young as she is, or a woman. Though, of course, both of those factors compound her success.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s no Obama, but she might be a once-in-a-lifetime politician, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>June smiles politely, but she must hear this all the time. “You want to get into politics? My brother does, and I think he’s crazy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora shakes her head. “I like knowing what’s going on, but no way. I’m going to MIT in the fall.” She knows June goes to UT for journalism, so it seems like a moot point to ask. “You’re not one of those politicians’ kids who wants to be as far away from politics as possible, are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>June shrugs. “Probably not </span>
  <em>
    <span>as </span>
  </em>
  <span>far away as possible. Like you said, I like knowing what’s going on, but I don’t want to have it be my whole life.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora nods. That’s a reasonable approach. “Want to get a coffee? We’ve still got a while before the debate actually starts, and there’s a decent coffee shop around the corner.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not a date. June – well, Nora hasn’t spent enough time with her to get a solid read, but June isn’t giving her </span>
  <em>
    <span>interested</span>
  </em>
  <span> vibes, not like that, so she’s not going to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But June is an interesting person, and Nora’s liked talking to her so far, so sneaking off to grab a coffee will at least accomplish the “talking to someone her own age” that her parents keep insisting on.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>A little over a year later, Nora sits with June – and Alex, this time – in a hotel in Austin as the results pour in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’ve been through so much in the past year, but also really nothing at all compared to what they’re going to face – together, as friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nora is in the room when Ellen Claremont is elected the first female President of the United States, and her grandfather, Mike, becomes the first Jewish Vice President of the United States.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ellen, as it turns out, is the tenth (or, really, the ninth) president to win the general election without her home state.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She and June share a look.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Technically Holleran is traditionally an Irish surname, but Nora is Jewish and we don't know whether or not Mike is - so in honor of Doug Emhoff, our new Second Gentleman-elect, I thought it'd be neat if Mike were Jewish, too. (Fun fact: not only every president, but also every VP in US history to date has been Christian)</p><hr/><p>visit me on <a href="http://xslytherclawx.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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